Scaling the Steps of the Philly Museum of Art
by trisanamcgraw
Summary: Cuddy enlists a special someone to help rehab House's leg after the shootingketamine. Spoilers up to 3x01 Meaning, although this plot is purely my speculation.


**Scaling the Steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art**

_**Author's Notes:**__ House gen for the LiveJournal community candycanedreams, challenge #4 – __**got snark?**__ We were instructed to take a given quote out of context and put it into an entirely new one. I was assigned the following:_

_Wilson (2x06 "Spin"): "I met someone who, uh, made me feel funny. Good. And I didn't want to let that feeling go."_

_Written because House in the period between "No Reason" and "Meaning" is love (__**spoilers**__ up to 3x01 "Meaning"). Also, a quick Spanish primer: _Hablo fluenteI speak fluently_, and _Enhorabuena Congratulations

-- --- --

**day ****five**** zero.**

House thumbed the remote to raise the volume of the television above the irritating blare of his home phone; when the latter finally ceased (no message), he settled back into the couch cushions with a contented sigh. But twenty seconds later, right as Paris was about to milk a cow on _The Simple Life_, the ringing was back. Finally, he snatched the phone from its cradle and pressed it to his ear. "Cuddy, we need you on hand for surgery, stat – transplant some of your ass onto Nicole Richie's body. It could be her only hope of surviving the winter!"

He could feel her rolling her eyes on the other end, and he allowed himself a slow grin. "Good afternoon to you too, House. Terribly sorry to interrupt your fun with the anorexic starlets –"

He snorted. "Yeah, right. Ask Cameron how I feel about skinny girls."

"—but I fail to see how FOX reruns can be more important than rehabilitating your leg."

"I've been working hard over here," he mock-protested. "In fact, right now I'm _crossing_ my legs."

Silence on the other end; he idly wondered if she had that same beautiful, hesitant smile she'd worn in his dream when he'd first walked without his cane. "House, that's wonderful – but you could do that in the hospital. If you want to be able to do more than imitate a swami, you need to start your physical therapy."

House stuck a Red Vine (from the bucket Chase had given him upon his discharge from the hospital, sentimental idiot) into his mouth. "_Ehh_…"

"Princeton-Plainsboro has an _excellent_ therapy program. If you're embarrassed about being seen there –"

"I'm not embarrassed, they're just incompetent," he shot back, a little too quickly. "They did a shitty job on Mark Warner; took him twice as long to recover from his paralysis."

"His physical therapy was set back four months because he tried to scale the stairway chasing after the man who was _sleeping with his wife_."

House winced. "Touché, but I'm still not going. I'm not a fan of people who think I need to share my feelings in order to strengthen my nonexistent muscles."

"A little birdie told me you might like this approach."

Right after she spoke, a sharp knock sounded from the door. House's eyes slowly crawled over to it in the stereotypical deer-in-the-headlights action of a teen caught in a slasher flick. But curiosity outweighed any movie-bred instinct to stay put (and he'd be a goner in these things anyway, since he'd count as both a non-virgin and a potential suspect), and he padded over to the doorway, remembering halfway through to put equal weight on his right foot.

No black-robed/masked killer greeted him at the door, though he was still convinced he must be in some bad movie: his mysterious visitor was _gorgeous_, with shiny dark hair, a lean (but curvaceous) figure, and full lips. She didn't say a word, just stood there expectantly.

There was silence, and then he crooned into the phone, "Cuddy, you shouldn't have. But it's not my birthday."

"No, it's your fifth day of physical therapy, and you're behind."

He wrinkled his brow as he regarded the strange beauty, eyes shifting from her lithe form to the phone against his ear. "Not gonna lie, boss – I'm not following."

Cuddy's frustrated _whuff_ of air was amplified over the line. "Don't tell me you don't remember her. Wilson brought her in during your detox, to help you –"

"_Ahh_," he interrupted loudly because really, there was no other way to interrupt Cuddy that was half as fun. "How could I forget a lovely girl like Inez?"

"_Ingrid_," both female voices responded simultaneously, one considerably more grating than the other; he held the phone away from his ear, pulling a face. The masseuse in the doorway smiled shyly.

"Ingrid has been working up to her physical therapy license; she can at least get you started, with rubbing your thigh and helping you walk. Now _go_."

No snappy comeback, so she must have thrown him slightly off-guard; Cuddy allowed herself to savor this small victory. Finally, House spoke again. "Give Wilson a scratch on the rump, and stop calling me to pester – now I've got a younger, hotter version to do that."

"Only because I'm paying her a grotesque amount of money," Cuddy retorted, and hung up with a satisfying _click_.

-

**days two to six.**

The next day she was at his door again, but a half-hour early. (It didn't matter; it wasn't like he would have been out of the apartment that day. He only noticed the difference in time because Oprah was barely halfway through her new transgender series – _he'd left a message on Cuddy's home phone, sweetly informing her that he'd gone to the trouble of TiVoing it for her_ – when the knock came.)

Each day she arrived earlier and earlier, till one Friday he found himself waking up at nine a.m. and preparing some coffee, which he sipped from the couch with the TV switched off. Ingrid didn't disappoint, appearing twenty minutes later.

Each day started off with a leg massage – time hadn't roughened those hands one bit – and then Ingrid helped him pace back and forth across the apartment. At first he disdained the idea of leaning his weight on her small if muscular body to walk a mere fifteen feet, but she stared him down – _what was it with him and women with steely glares?_ – until he reluctantly acquiesced. Soon he didn't need her support at all; she'd simply check over his leg once he sagged back onto the couch.

She sometimes gave murmurs of encouragement in Spanish; he bitched back that he didn't need to be treated like a toddler stumbling around furniture, but eventually they both let up, realizing that neither was paying any heed to the other's thoughts. It was perfect – not a single word had to pass between them. Cuddy knew him well.

-

**day seven.**

As Ingrid shut the door behind her this morning, House noticed that she carried none of her usual massage oil accoutrements. "Forget your tool kit at home?" he called from the kitchen, where he was fishing through the refrigerator. "Or is this the week when we start exercising different muscles?" He waggled his eyebrows.

There was, of course, no verbal retort; instead, Ingrid simply smiled and hooked her thumbs underneath the waistline of her yoga pants, sliding them down her legs. House experienced a flash of anxiety before Ingrid straightened up, revealing a pair of sinfully tiny shorts that, much to his disappointment, looked as if they actually _were_ meant to be worn outside of the bedroom.

"_Corremos_," she said brightly.

House wrenched his eyes back to the general vicinity of her face/neck. "Huh?"

Ingrid pursed her lips, then, with a look of intense concentration, said, sounding out the syllables, "We – ru – _run_."

"_Hablo fluente_," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "What I don't get is why you're telling me this. In case you haven't noticed, these legs haven't gone above point-five miles per hour since _Alias_ premiered."

"Is next step of process," Ingrid supplied haltingly, with a meaningful glance downward. House's gaze trailed down the long, tapered, tan legs to feet that had before been obscured; on her little Latin American feet were Nike Air Max 360s.

He whistled appreciatively. "Nice kicks."

-

**day nine.**

"Come on!" House shouted, sprinting past her; when Ingrid kept to her slow jog, he circled her twice. "I know that I've got some years on you, but this is shameful!"

House pulled up alongside her, bouncing more up and down than forward to emphasize his childlike impatience. "What do you think I am, a cripple?" he demanded in the same loud and obnoxious voice, pushing his face close to hers. "You gotta make me sweat for it!"

Ingrid merely sent him a _you-asked-for-it_ smirk and sped up so that all he could see of her was her tight derriere bobbing up and down against the backdrop of lush grass. With a satisfied leer, House followed dutifully, mouth slightly open on harsh exhalations, eyes trained on her lithe figure.

-

**day sixteen.**

Ingrid was singing a rapid-fire rendition of Thalia's "Mujer Latina" in the shower as House wandered around his kitchen, simply reveling in the feel of cool tile beneath his bare feet and the ability to open the refrigerator door and drink all at once. Guzzling some water from his brand-new red Nalgene bottle ("Now I feel like one of the cool kids," he'd mocked when Ingrid had presented him with it), he idly considered calling Wilson up to brag, or at least to make Wilson think he had a reason to brag.

When he approached the phone, however, the message light was red. He rolled his eyes and pressed the button, expecting to hear more of Cuddy's irritating reminders, but instead he was treated to an unfamiliar male voice.

"Hi Greg, this is Doctor Nimetz. I'm a physical therapist in Trenton; Lisa Cuddy gave me your number in the hopes that we could set up a consultation and then hopefully jump right into rehabilitating your leg. You can reach me at my office, at 609-258 –"

House snorted and erased the message without hesitation. Like he'd ever take therapy advice from someone who called him Greg. Ingrid certainly didn't call him Greg. Not, he thought, casting a half-wistful glance at his closed bathroom door, that he'd mind if she did.

-

**day twenty-two.**

"_Dun-na-na, dun-na-na_," House muttered under his breath as his feat slapped the pavement in an even rhythm. Jogging a few feet ahead, Ingrid glanced back at him, strands of dark hair caressing her wrinkled forehead.

"It's the _Rocky_ theme," he panted. When there was no further understanding, he pressed on: "C'mon, _Rocky_? Sylvester Stallone? Boxer who goes into massive training for the fight of his life, with that famous scene where he powers up the stairs of the Phila – delphia Museum – of –" House abruptly stopped and bent double, right hand clutching the stitch in his side. "Never mind," he wheezed. "You were probably still too busy scurrying across the border when the first one came out."

-

**day thirty.**

"I asked for – ordered – the ketamine without hesitation," he said, apropos of nothing, as they stood gasping in his doorway; today they'd made it up to five miles. "I knew about the possible neurological effects. And I was willing to give up what makes me me – _both_ of those things – in order to live without the pain."

-

**day thirty-seven.**

"One month." House rubbed a hand over his jaw. "It's been a month that we've been doing our little movie-montage in the park. Longer that I've been off the pills. But it shouldn't be that easy." As if to emphasize his point, he flexed his right hand. Of course he still noted the absence of the two (_or was it four? For the life of him he couldn't recall an exact number_) chalky tablets that he was so used to swilling in his palm like a handful of jelly beans. He'd rather anticlimactically stopped using cold-turkey at the hospital: they'd simply never been available, what with the morphine drip that too had steadily dwindled, and no roaring pain to demand them. Though at home the first few days he'd absently tossed some down the hatch out of habit, it'd been weeks and he'd felt no gnawing need to snatch them out of his jacket (_he'd been wearing nothing but T-shirts, anyway_) and swallow them.

"How does the appeal just disappear?" he mused aloud. "I was an addict, that was painfully obvious. But the moment the pain's gone I stop just like that" – he snapped his fingers – "without another thought. Is it really that easy?"

Ingrid emerged from the kitchen, and he paused in his pacing, his reverie interrupted. "_Enhorabuena – un mes_," she said in a smooth voice, though her huge grin revealed her true excitement, withdrawing a sprinkled chocolate donut from behind her back.

House was taken aback. "_Gracias_," he finally said in an equally quiet voice, taking the treat. His throat worked, and he added, "Though I was hoping for some edible underwear."

-

**day thirty-eight.**

He and Ingrid sat on the couch, she flipping through his copy of _Soap Opera Digest_, he with his head propped up on one arm, staring past the reality show playing on his TV.

"I 'met someone'" – his lips twisted into a sardonic half-smile – "who made me feel…ah…funny." That wasn't entirely right. For all of Cuddy and Wilson's whiny protests, the Vicodin rarely got him high – it merely yanked him out of the bowels of pain and plunked him back at his ground-zero diagnostic brilliance. He amended his words: "Good. And I didn't want to let that feeling go."

-

**day thirty-nine.**

"I was ready to give that feeling up – the satisfaction of solving a puzzle no one else can, the triumph of diagnosing a mysterious disease. I ordered ketamine knowing all of the possible side effects, because I was that desperate to stop the pain. But now it's gone, and I still have my mind. That begs the question, what to do now? I never wanted to change. _I don't want to change_."

Ingrid lifted her eyes from his hand, though she continued to squeeze his knuckles with her thumbs. He hummed in approval, letting his eyelids flutter shut. "That doesn't mean I want you to stop these heavenly hand massages. They're the best action I've had in a long time, probably for a while after this – unless" (he patted his leg) "I'm able to make an appointment with a lady friend. Who knows? The world is my oyster now."

-

**day fifty-one.**

The leaves were draining of their color, drying and curling in on themselves. Those that had seemed to smother his feet when he took his first halting steps out of the hospital now gave way beneath his sneakers; the air carried a cold twinge that tickled the sweat along his back.

They had run two miles in silence when House felt an inexplicable emotion tug at his stomach. As they topped the next hill, he began to peel away, noticing that at the same time Ingrid fell back a step. Another few strides, and now the roles were reversed – he glanced at her over his shoulder, smiled, and then turned his focus to the six miles between his feet and Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.


End file.
